To encourage more extensive review of police and prosecutorial conduct, the task force is considering methods of shifting some of the decision and rule-making functions of the appellate courts to other agencies. Members of the task force also believe that time-tables and computers might be introduced to reduce excessive delays between arraignment and the termination of the cases following trial and appeal.

After surveying the existing correctional facilities, the task force in that field is developing "a model to serve as a blueprint for the future," including specialized methods of treating different types of offenders and programs for job-training during the day outside prisons. The commission will urge correction officials, according to one staff member, "to try as much as possible to treat people in the community," and give them an opportunity to lead some kind of productive life beyond the jail walls.

Working across the boundaries of the other task forces, the group on science and technology plans to recommend new methods of preventing crime, locating and returning stolen goods, improving communication, and processing information about offenders. At a recent meeting of the National Symposium of Science and Criminal Justice, speakers told of ideas for making automobiles theft proof, computer linked alarms that would pinpoint unseen law violations, non-lethal gases to neutralize intruders and chemicals that would color a fleeing vehicle or leave a burglar with a distinctive, unshakable odor.

In all these fields, Vorenberg hopes that the commission can promote more efficient cooperation between the various agencies, state and federal, which are involved in crime prevention. "I think everybody recognizes," he notes, "that the system works against itself because there isn't close coordination." The correction people and police people tend to thwart one another by not working together on common problems.

Despite the breadth of his assignment from the President, Vorenberg makes no claim that the commission's report will be exhaustive. It will certainly confront the major problems in the various fields of criminal justice. "The commission won't have time to deal with all of the areas where change will be appropriate." It will have to say "here is what we have done and here is what we have not." With regard to many problems it "will just give the once over lightlly," and "we'll come to places where we will have to say we just don't have time."

The recommendations of the commission will be limited by a lack of information, as well as a lack of time. "We know so little," says Vorenberg sadly. "This might lead you to say let's do nothing or wait for "twenty-five years of concentrated research." "You hate in any field," he says, "to recommend major change without being sure what the effects of those changes will be." But constructive change is possible, he adds quickly, by pragmatic mehods--"make a change and test it, make a change and test it." In fact, Vorenberg hopes for "a whole new approach whereby people engaged in the operation--"the police for example" -- are responsible for helping to test the effects of what they do."

There is a very real danger, however, that the recommendations of the commission may get caught in a cross-fire between the police, who fear the